


heart on your sleeve

by sylph_feather



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Phic Phight, Phic phight 2020, Self-Esteem Issues, Shapeshifting, i SWEAR its not that angsty, introspective, phic phight 20, phicphight, shapeshift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylph_feather/pseuds/sylph_feather
Summary: TWO FACTS:1. Ghost’s own perceptions and feelings effect how they look.2. Danny is a mess.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 231





	heart on your sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kimcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimcat/gifts).



> Prompt by Kimcat: “Outward in. A ghost's appearance is based on how they view themselves, at least partially. So what happens as Phantom views himself differently? Monster? Nerd? Hero? Etc.”

When Danny enters from the portal for the last time of his  _ full  _ life and emerges with only half of that life left, he has no time for measly  _ perceptions.  _ His ghost form crackles with green electricity and the only thing on his mind is death; he barely perceives that negative image in the mirror, almost loses it in the storm of his mind. 

It is a long time before he  _ goes ghost _ again, instead dealing with minor power accidents— sliding through floors, becoming invisible, the like. 

Even then, all that is  _ perceptions, desires.  _

_ I want to not be here,  _ he thinks, and he will slide through the floor with a gasp. 

Thoughts like that are easy to control. What are not so easy are the feelings. 

_ I feel invisible,  _ he thinks, staring out at the sea of faces in the hallway. 

Nobody reacts when he sits in his seat; not even Tuck, who is placed beside him. 

It’s not until he’s marked absent despite raising his hand that Danny figures it out. 

Thankfully, he stops himself from foolishly protesting aloud, instead using that slipping through ability on the door (mastered that one quick, given continuing to slide through stuff was equal parts annoying and horrifying) and standing in the hallway and thinking of the feeling of eyes on his skin until he can see himself again. 

xXx

The invisibility at the thought of  _ feeling  _ invisible is common. Frankly, Danny is a nobody, and when he doesn’t feel invisible then he often subconsciously prays not to be seen, and his ghost side is more than happy to oblige  _ that  _ as well. 

It’s an easy fix to think of the eyes on him, to switch the want off, to be seen again. It helps that being invisible is something quite noticeable to him and not to others; easy to remedy without being caught, so long as nobody sees Danny _ directly  _ as he flickers in or out. 

You may ask,  _ what’s something less noticeable, then? _

Perhaps it’s the errant thought of  _ smallness  _ Danny gets when compared to high achievers, both of social status and grades. 

This time, Danny does not notice the change (so caught up in mental comparisons to Jazz) until said sister is squinting at him, literally sizing him up, and he notices she seems a good bit taller than him, looking down more than another day. 

She shakes her head, and he can practically hear the mental recitations of psych texts, likely noting the size discrepancy as slumped posture indicative of… some other nonsense. 

Danny laughs a little nervous laugh, and he scampers upstairs before she notices that he truly had shaved off a couple of inches. 

_ What am I supposed to do? Just…  _ he frowns,  _ think big thoughts?  _

So Danny squints and thinks of how tall he feels normally (which isn’t that tall). 

It  _ does _ work, one of the few things in Danny’s life that’s solved fairly easy.

Something mischievous inside him wonders at using this to grow taller. Another part doesn’t want to touch something that stinks of his monstrous ghost side. 

xXx

It’s a multitude of moments that just seem to pile up. 

Danny feels heavy and weighed down, and the stairs creak under that new weight, gravity pressing down on his lungs twofold until he (literally and emotionally) lightens up a bit. 

Danny feels glowingly happy, and his eyes become a fiercer blue, noticeable to his friends.

His form subtly reshapes itself on how he feels himself; one day he is content and everything about him is glowing and floaty, another day he is morose with a form forced into a hunch that has been stretched into a dulled sadness, everything about him drooping and dreary. 

Perhaps the worst are the days of self hatred, where his thoughts say  _ I’m a monster.  _ Danny has noticed more of the changes in his form, and thus these days become more and more. 

_ So what?  _ he scoffs to himself on a low day,  _ just because I turn invisible, get a little small, sometimes, get heavier or lighter randomly randomly, get— stop! It doesn’t mean I’m… _

There’s not much to say to his thoughts when he’s grinding such sharp teeth together, plucking at his shirt with nails that have filed themselves into claws.

_ I’m not,  _ he protests. 

He’s just lying to himself, true feelings simmered up to the surface. 

xXx

It’s nearing a month after the accident where Sam asks, “can you get that ghost form back?” 

Tucker elbows her, still treading around eggshells. Sam was never the type to avoid stomping eggshells with combat boots (despite the irony of her being a vegetarian, if such were taken literally). 

Danny considers, for a moment, that form. Something about it is terrifyingly alien and monstrous in his mind, but curiosity draws him with equal if not greater tantalizations. A  _ morbid  _ curiosity, to be technical. 

So Danny, tapping into those feelings, falls into that state of mind; thinks himself as  _ ghost,  _ thinks himself as  _ monstrous.  _ Halloween images flood into his head, and then more primal images of his own electrocution. 

Phantom’s second appearance is just as terrifying as his first, albeit for different reason. 

The first was filled with fears of death and ghosts. This one is filled with the same, and the ghost is far less recognizably Danny. 

The halfa has not refined his transformation to something as elegant as a ring, nor something as mentally easy as flipping a switch to his core; no, no, he activated it with the much harder and less easy to control power of perception. The white ring is not a ring, but a crackle of thunderous electricity that eats at him like the first time, leaping around the room, and Phantom emerges. 

Instinctively, Tucker and Sam flinch back from the cold, charged air, and they cannot meet their friend in his hollow, toxic green eyes. Everything about him crackles, from his aura to his form. When Danny reaches toward them with a clawed hand, his hair jerks around pointed ears like it’s suspended in water. 

His mouth opens and  _ too many sharp teeth _ and he makes a hurt sound that’s echoey, tinny, clutching his claws into his void black jumpsuit. 

“Danny,” Sam is the first to get over it, stepping toward him as he floats suspended in Tucker’s room, a floating, tightly coiled ball. 

“I don’t know how to change back,” he says, voice sounding like it comes over a bad radio. He squeezes his green eyes shut and now he cannot think anything but  _ monster,  _ and everything gets  _ more.  _

“This isn’t what you looked like the first time,” she informs bluntly.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Danny hisses, wrapping himself tighter. 

“You said one time you felt invisible,” Tucker starts slowly, “and you became invisible.” He blinks, slowly, continuing to list off all that Danny previously informed his two friends of— “glowing when happy, heavy and droopy or small when sad.” He pauses. “Is this what you think you are?” 

Danny hiccups, and his tears glow.

“I don’t think of you like that,” Tucker says, pointedly ignoring all the,  _ er,  _ points. “You just looked like  _ you.”  _

“With old man hair,” Sam prods, “and a weird jumpsuit.” 

“Admittedly, you did look radioactive,” Tucker giggles, seeing Danny breathe evenly a bit. 

With each calming breath, more of those features slip away until the  _ normal  _ (more normal, at least) negative Danny Fenton remains. 

“Thanks,” he mutters, uncurling, and thinks about himself as  _ warm, alive, human _ . 

xXx

  
  


xXx

_ Bonus:  _

The first time Danny sees Vlad, he sees him with a little more pity, looking at that blue skin, horn-hair, fangs, red eyes, and thinking of his second transformation—

“What are  _ you  _ looking at, boy?” Vlad hisses, and fires a pink beam at Danny. 

_ Ow.  _ Danny stops feeling so bad. 

**Author's Note:**

> I focussed mostly on the “monster” aspect, but I still hope you like it! Maybe one day I’ll add on, because I like this idea.


End file.
